James West

Climate Desk Producer

James West is a producer for the Climate Desk. He wrote Beijing Blur (Penguin 2008), an intimate yet far-reaching account of modernizing China’s underground youth scene. After completing a masters in journalism at New York University in 2007, James returned to Australia where he worked as the executive producer of the national affairs program Hack. He has produced a variety of Australian television and radio programs, including the debate show Insight on SBS TV.

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"Holy Shit!" A Colorado Springs Family Returns to Burned-Out Home

Amid the ruins, fears that climate change is turning the West into a tinderbox.

—By James West and Tim McDonnell

| Thu Jul. 5, 2012 3:00 AM PDT

When Hani Ahmad left his home in Colorado Springs as the Waldo Canyon fire raced down the mountainside, he expected to return. When he did, the house where his family has lived for two decades was a smoldering hole in the ground. The only recognizable remnant was a melted hunk of stove. As the family rounded the corner for the first time, Hani's daughter captured the horror on her phone. The family agreed to share the footage with Climate Desk, offering an exclusive look into the heart of the destruction.

Hani is searching for answers in the ashes. Built-up fuel, high winds, and the proximity of houses to the forest all play a role, he says. But eating away at him is the worry that climate change made it worse—and that the danger is only growing.

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Colorado Wildfire: Our Scorching Future?

—By Tim McDonnell and James West

| Tue Jun. 12, 2012 3:00 AM PDT

The High Park fire rages in northern Colorado on Monday. @j_noecker via Twitter

For the past 30 years, residents of tiny Laporte, Colorado, near the Wyoming border, have gathered inside Bob's Coffee Shop to swap gossip over coffee and Danishes near the dense pine forest of Lory State Park. But since the weekend, Bob's has become a very different kind of social hub: a de facto refugee camp for homeowners fleeing what many here call the worst wildfire in decades.

From a booth just a mile and half from the fireline, Bob's owner Chris McCullough described in a phone interview seeing forest ridges ablaze with arching orange flames, a sky blanketed in thick white smoke, and ash falling like snow. At other tables, locals shared updates about the fire's spread and talked about what they were—and weren't—able to save from their homes, which may—or may not—still be standing.

"It's the fastest-growing, hottest-burning fire I've ever seen," said longtime resident and Bob's patron John Brewer, whose home was evacuated Saturday night. "I don't know how we're going to survive this one."

"It's the fastest-growing, hottest-burning fire I've ever seen," said one longtime resident. "I don't know how we're going to survive this one."

Other evacuated locals agreed. "The whole hillside was erupting as we were looking at it," said Charlie Wrobbel, who was awoken in bed with his wife Saturday night by the sudden flash of 40-foot flames a few hundreds yards from the doorstep; they snatched up pets and what personal items they could carry and drove off. "We were heartbroken, because we didn't know if there would be anything to come home to."

By Monday afternoon, they still didn't.

The High Park fire, as it's known, had grown to nearly 60 square miles by late Monday, making it, along with a massive fire still raging in New Mexico, one of this year's earliest of the mega-fires that ravage the West every summer. One man is believed dead, according to the local sheriff's office, along with over 100 structures destroyed. The fire was started by lightning, which on Saturday morning ignited a stand of pines that, after an unusually arid winter and spring, were 30 percent drier than normal.

[Read the full article]

Interactive: New York's Roofscape Gets Climate Makeover

Witness the evolution of NYC's billion-square-foot roofscape in the face of climate change.

—By James West and Tim McDonnell

| Thu Jun. 7, 2012 3:00 AM PDT

Most visitors to New York City crane their necks for a view of the city's famous skyline, but locals know better: To get the best views, you have to go up. Here's your chance to take a rare—and vivid—journey atop a few of the city's billion square feet of rooftops.

As the Big Apple faces ever-hotter summers, officials are looking for ways to cool off in some of the only unused space left in a crowded city: rooftops.

Fertile vegetated "green" roofs absorb the sun's rays, while reflective "white" roofs bounce them back to space. Both are sprouting up in response to a 2008 city rule that requires new roofs to be climate friendly. Meanwhile, the city is working with the Obama administration to overhaul its hulking construction bureaucracy, making it easier for solar panel installers to turn rooftops into the city's fastest-growing energy provider.

Climate Desk strapped on hardhats, jumped into elevators, and scaled ladders to see firsthand how the roofscape of New York is adapting to face a changing climate.

Brooklynites: Don't Frack Our Beer!

—By James West and Tim McDonnell

| Thu May. 17, 2012 3:00 AM PDT

Does worrying about fracking make you thirst for a drink? Before you raise that pint of ale to your lips, consider the source.

The brewmeister of Brooklyn Brewery says toxic fracking chemicals like methanol, benzene, and ethylene glycol (found in anti-freeze) could contaminate his beer by leaking into New York's water supply. Unlike neighboring Pennsylvania, New York state has promised to ban high-volume fracking from the city's watershed. But environmentalists say the draft fracking regulations are weak and leave the largest unfiltered water supply in the United States—not to mention the beer that is made from it—vulnerable.

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Can Real-Time Pricing Green the Grid?

To address climate change, don't forget the largest, carbon-spewing machine on earth: the US electric grid.

—By James West and Tim McDonnell

| Wed May. 9, 2012 12:01 AM PDT

Photo: James West

Unless you've been living off the grid, you've probably heard about President Obama's "all of the above" plan for America's energy future, which embraces everything from oil drilling and natural gas fracking to wind, solar, and even pond scum. In the last couple years the Obama administration has pumped billions into cutting-edge clean energy tech. But these all share a common problem: plugging into an electric grid that is mostly unchanged since the 1930s. Energy experts say meeting our carbon-footprint reduction goals will remain a pipe dream until we can revamp electricity distribution. The solution? The "smart grid," a nickname for a sweeping series of updates on everything from power stations to the meter in your home, which promises to save power and money by being sensitive to your energy use.

In the second installment of Climate Desk's Future Energy series, see how America is modernizing the largest machine on the planet.